And closing out the season of actually leaving the house and doing things, tonight we saw the Capitol Steps.

All I have to say is it’s really nice to spend an hour and a half laughing.

This geeky.

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Yes, it’s that time of year again. Time for the local Ramp Festivals!

April 19th is the Richwood Ramp Festival. (The website is painful, but does have some interesting information.)
April 26th is the Randolph County Ramp Festival.

And before you ask, not I’m not going to any Ramp festivals. I’m not THAT nuts.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m a huge fan of Firefox. It’s my web browser of choice, and I was converted after having used Mozilla for several years. (I also have Sea Monkey, IE 6, and Safari installed on this computer, but I like Firefox best.)

One of the things I’ve grown to adore are the extensions.

All my computers have the L33T KEY extension (convert text to ROT 13 on the fly!), Forecast Fox, IE Tab, Fire FTP, Tab Mix Plus, and Notifiers for Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

But there are some others that are just fun. I just installed Firesomething, and now my browser is called Mozilla Thunderpig. Yesterday it was Firebadger I think. It accomplished nothing other than making me smile when I look at the title bar. I also found the xkcd extension that allows you to read the longer xkcd titles, which, oddly enough, is precisely why I was searching the extensions in the first place.

The aftermath, when it came, was unprecedented.

After years of seeing tweens and young girls tarted up like cheap trollops, the hammer came down with force.

In his state of the state address, the president said that if children wanted to dress like grownups, they’d have to act like grownups; any child found to be wearing adult themed clothing or using adult appliances in public, including mp3 players and phones that did more than make calls and came in colors other than primary, was to immediately be given a job. DVD players were allows as long as they were playing G rated material.

Overnight, sales of Osh Kosh B’Gosh went through the roof, and supply was unable to keep up with demand. Sales of Barbie plummetted as sales of rag dolls and stuffed animals went through the roof.

The only drawback was that rather quickly older teens and college students picked up the new style, and within a year, babydoll outfits, previously limited to a subset of manga and anime fans, were everywhere, which cause teen and twenty-something males no end of panic, as they constinually feared they’d accidentally hit on a thirteen year old instead of an eighteen year old. But even that had it’s bright side, as the scared men and boys became unfailingly polite, since they often couldn’t tell if the females around them were actual children or potential dating material.

(See here for something akin to an explanation.)

I’ve got nothing but busy today. So please share your non-sequiturs.

Additionally, I desperately want to keep writing while I’m tying to get up early enough to work on my other story, so what I really want are phrases our pictures that will set off a story for me. Please?

OK, so I was thinking more along the lines of this or this.

My cousins’ grandmother, with whom I spent a fair a amount of time when I was younger, since I spent a fair amount of time with my aunt & uncle, had trouble breathing today (she’s been in hospice for several months). She’s been aspirated, and is breathing easier, but I believe we are looking at the final path she is going to take to the end.

Please send thoughts of whatever flavor her way, and for her husband and for my uncle and cousins. They are quite religious, but I’m sure are open to prayers and thoughts of all kinds.

Although she changed after her stroke more than a decade and a half ago, I prefer to think of her as the vivacious, outgoing woman with the amazing sense of humor (as is par for the course in that family!), who raised my favorite uncle.

So my friend Kim is getting married in Wyoming this September, and I’m going to be her matron of honor. (Yes, this means I have to wear a dress. And it’s a RED dress. Try not to faint. [I’ll even take pictures so you can see this historic occasion.])

So Michael and I have been looking online for cheap flights.

And failing miserably.

However, someone stopped by to visit me at work yesterday, and suggested we take the train.

“The train? We have a train system?”

OK, it wasn’t quite that bad, but it just wasn’t anything I had considered. So I looked into it. The prices are comparable, except that I have more than four inches of leg room in the seats, and one can get sleeping rooms, and those come with meals included.

The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. I mean, the train! It makes me think of “Murder on the Orient Express” and “The Wild Wild West” and Cass Scenic Railroad all rolled into one. Of course it’s not going to be like that, but it will be two days riding on the train, with leg room and beds and meals.

How awesome is that?

Plus, it’s TRAIN!

So, it looks like we’re going to be taking the train to Denver, and then driving to Jackson Hole, WY in September. And we’re going to spend one night in Denver, so if anyone is going to be in Denver on 15 September, we’ll be spending the day there, waiting for our train!

Wheeeee!!!!

New flower pr0n, including my spring barren front garden, and a truly frightening mutant daffodil. (I kid you not, these daffodils frighten me.)

AKA, What Michelle Is Holding in her Current Blogger Profile.

This image also comes up as one of my random headers.

I do believe my brother got them at the Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild.

Janiece asks if I don’t have something better to do. The answer is, why YES! I DO!

We’re going to see the Harlem Globetrotters this evening!

Like I said before, there are major advantages to living in a small town with a large university.

Not-Sophie limped up her thin body up to the large jowly man dishing out mealy, watery gruel.

“Please sir, may I have some more?”

“MORE?” the man yelled at the top of his lungs. The supervisor leaned out his window to start at the man. “Why of course you may,” the man growled, sounding like he’d eat nails then give her more food. “Only the best for our specials.” The word twisted in his mouth to something ugly as he spoke it, making not-Sophie think of maggots and slugs and poisonous snakes.

The big man leaned forward, being careful not to touch not-Sophie and whispered to her, “do you know what is going to happen to you? Do you?”

Not-Sophie started up at him and slowly shook her head.

“All you specials have a future ahead of you. You get extra resources now, but I can’t wait until the suffering begins, when they slowly tear your consciousness away from your body. I’ve heard it’s an extremely painful process. Sometimes if I listen carefully I can hear your screams during the night.” He leaned even more closely to her. “Your time is soon,” he hissed.

Not-Sophie gave a small scream and jumped back. The pot of boiling gruel suddenly leapt up and upended itself over the fat man’s head. As he screamed in pain, not-Sophie ran from the cafeteria back to the dormitory, and crawled under the covers, sobbing quietly to herself.

She never saw the fat man again. But everything he told her was true. Sometimes she cursed him for that, other times she blessed him. Either way, he was long gone, and she was changed far more than even he could imagine.

What is this? It’s Sophie from Shinola.

When we last saw our heroes:

(Blink/Sophie) moved blindly from one corridor to another until something in Sophie’s mind clicked. “Wait, turn back,” she said. “Go down that last corridor we just past. Something tells me that the weapons systems control will be that way.”

Green fire and black smoke billowed from the heap of rubble that had been Sophie’s home. Mission accomplished, not-Sophie painfully limped the air, pushing its faltering propulsion system just ahead of the shock wave.

It messaged the local agent. “This is Dreadnought UCF-17 ‘Sophie’ calling Mowat Goldmember. This is a code 99 request for immediate support.”
…
Meanwhile, not-Sophie1 targeted the nearest wormhole, threaded the gap, then accerated toward the familiar scan signatures of the Tragethan fleet.

Blink/Sophie’s body had been badly beaten. The failed attempt at disabling the weapons systems control had alerted the Trageth. Their security forces immediately took action and quickly apprehended the intruders. The Trageth were not known for their kindness and used harsh methods when interrogating prisoners. Sophie’s conscious had to recede and allow Blink’s to take over during the ordeal. His firm resolve enabled him to withstand the brutal beating yet not reveal any critical details of his mission.
…
A gigantic dreadnought clambered into the room. “Agent 2375 I am SpaceForce dreadnought UCF-17 I have been dispatched for your immediate retrieval.” The mega machine’s sensor’s surveyed its surrounding “Come with me if you want to live.”

And now, to continue our story…
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Not-Sophie rematerialized and then pulled her six-shooter out of the ether. She stared at Nathan while tapping the long nails of her other hand against her metallic hip.

Click click click click. Click click click click.

“Really Nathan,” she said firmly, “I thought we had moved past all this.”

Nathan stared defiantly at not-Sophie. “Past what?” he said. “You’re not real! You can’t do any actual damage to me! Besides, it’s only a game!”

Not-Sophie continued tapping her nails.

Click click click click. Click click click click.

“It may be a game to you sir, but I’m the one who has to spend all the energy rematerializing every time you blow me up for your amusement.” She looked at Nathan like he was something unpleasant she’d discovered on the bottom of her shoe in a dark, dank, dirty alley. “Sure, I can continue to rebuild myself infinitely, but it gets old rather quickly.”

Click click click click. Click click click click.

“Come on,” said Nathan. “No harm done. It’s not like it’s costing you anything.”

“Not costing my anything?” not-Sophie replied, one fine eyebrow rising slightly. “Look how many parts of the story I have NOT been in! How am I supposed to save the children of that nasty little planet you created if you keep killing me and keeping me from my job?

Click click click click. Click click click click.

Not-Sophie shifted her weight, and slammed the six-shooter into the holster that suddenly appeared on her hip. Her eyes shifted from cold steely-blue to fiery steely-green. “I’m serious. Stop trying to kill me. I’ve got work to do, and your little machinations are becoming an annoyance.

And with that not-Sophie disappeared, leaving behind only the sound of her nails tapping against her hip.

Click click click click. Click click click click.